Samsung has formally announced the industry first 10nm-class 8Gb LPDDR5 DRAM. Designed for mobile applications such as smartphones and tablets, this new kind of DRAM can reach data rates of up to 6,400Mbps, which is 1.5x faster than LPDDR4X DRAM chips found on current flagship mobile devices.
This new 10nm-class 8Gb LPDDR5 DRAM aims to provide a better solution for 5G and Artificial Intelligence-powered mobile devices. Depending on the manufacturer’s implementation, this 10nm-class LPDDR5 DRAM can be found in two bandwidths – 6,400Mbs at 1.1v or 5,500MBs at 1.05v. This was made possible courtesy of several architectural advancements. Samsung has doubled the number of memory banks from 8 to 16 as well as attaining higher speeds while reducing power consumption.
To improve power efficiency, Samsung’s new DRAM has been engineered to lower voltage in accordance with the speed of the corresponding application processor when in active mode. It also doesn’t overwrite cells with “0” values as well as having a new deep sleep mode that cuts power usage to approximate half the idle mode of current LPDDR4X RAM. All these improvements allow Samsung to achieve power consumption reductions of up to 30%, which should be a large power saving feature in future mobile devices.
The LPDDR5 specifications are still being formalized but Samsung has already tested and validated its prototype with its package. The manufacturer is already planning mass-production of their new DRAM with increasing demands from its global customers.
